Hello, friends!! Summer is in full swing and I’ve been finding it so hard to stay focused lately with all the summer (& holiday) festivities! I thought you might be feeling the same way, so here are my 5 tips for staying motivated.

Know your WHY. My why is to create a business that not only helps people find peace in their home through organization, but also do what I need to do now to create the life that my husband and I dream of and one day start a family.

Share your goals with others. This one is KEY for me!!! When I have others cheering me on and holding me more accountable, it keeps me motivated on even my worst days. This could be Facebook Groups, a Business/Life Coach, a friend or even through Instagram Stories!! Let others know what you’re up to and let that motivate you.

Tough Love. Nothing will change or get better in any area of our lives unless we make the hard decision to work for it. When you’re feeling unmotivated, ask yourself how will I feel if I don’t accomplish this? And what goal am I giving up if this doesn’t get done?

Reward yourself. All work and no play is no fun!! Remember to still enjoy what you’re doing and reward yourself for getting through a tough project at work, getting through your to-do list or cleaning out the junk drawer you’ve been avoiding. Find what reward fuels you -- taking a bath, glass of wine, getting your nails done or watching your favorite show!

All these tips for motivation are what I share with my clients. WHY do you want to organize this space? HOW are you going to incorporate this into your daily life to maintain it? WHO is going to hold you accountable? WHAT happens and HOW will you feel if it’s not maintained? And WHAT will be your reward for small wins (keeping it organized for one week, one month, six months, etc.)? I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July and please be safe!! I hope these 5 Tips help you to get motivated after the holiday! ;)

Last week I wrote the blog about getting Back to the Basics. Looking back on this month I think that’s been a common theme of mine. So often we get into a groove where things are going so great and we feel like we can conquer the world!! I’d like to say that feeling lasts forever but we are human! It doesn’t last forever and that’s okay. It’s how we cope with it and the strides we take to get back into the groove of things. When I lose my groove and things feel jumbled, I take a step back, breath and journal. My journal prompts are: What am I doing in my life right now that fuels me? What do I want to be doing? What roadblocks (physical and mental) have I hit that is preventing me from getting there? When was the last time I felt in control/in my groove? Then I envision what it felt like to be in that controlled headspace and visualize the steps I have to take today to get back there. This journaling exercise helps me to organize my thoughts and provide clarity to my purpose. Taking the time to journal to these questions helps me to get back to the basics and take action today to get to where I want to be. The feeling of having everything in our lives all together and under control isn’t continuous, but the time between doesn’t have to be long either. This idea is comparable to the organization in our homes. We may organize and get everything in its place and then we live it in, doing our best to keep it together. We do for a time but then one day we look around and we find we’ve lost control. Well my friend, congratulations! You are human. Don’t let this feeling linger. Fight all urges to throw in the towel and instead take charge of your space. Learn from why it didn’t stay organized like that first day and adjust. Do you need to schedule it into your week to tidy the space? Do you need to involve the family so they know? (More on keeping organization sustainable here) Do not accept defeat. Organization isn’t a quick fix, it’s a journey. Just like everything else we do in our lives, if we want to improve and get better it takes hard work and determination. If you’ve lost control of an area of your home, hit reset today. Visualize that perfectly organized space. Live in the daydream of what it it looks like to be perfectly organized for you and what feelings you have being surrounded by it. Use this visualization as fuel to take charge and organized your space once again. You can do it friend! I know you can!! ​

Hello, friend! Today I’m sharing 5 steps to achieving a more organized space. What sets me apart from other organizers is that I use techniques that I learned while in school at Iowa State University. In my Industrial Engineering classes I learned about the process called “5s”. I was enlightened to the topic of workplace organization and I was excited to go to class and learn how the 5s process, as well as many other techniques, can make a work environment more efficient. Now being in my field of engineering, majority of Industrial Engineers go on to work in a manufacturing facility, so a lot of examples and scenarios in school revolve around that. I looked at it from a Professional Organizer perspective. The techniques can so easily be translated to home organization!! So, let’s zero in on the 5s process as it relates to organizing your home. 5s is a Japanese method for workplace organization. It relates to five Japanese words: seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke. These translate to sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain.

Sort: I think this is the most important one. If you start organizing from the beginning without any thought into what items you are organizing, you would be making your work ten times harder! I sort into three categories: keep, toss and donate. Anything that you don’t want, try to donate it if it is in good shape. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure! Once you’ve divided all your items into those three categories, take the items to donate and get the toss items out of the space. It gives the rest of the process a breath of fresh air to only have the items that are going in the space.

Set in Order: This can be thought of as an extension of sort. Here you are putting the remaining items (your keep pile) into groups and like-items. Make sure everything will have a spot. Every place has a thing and everything in its place!!

Shine: Simple as that! Clean your space. You’d be surprised at how much a deep clean can change the feel of your space.

Standardize: Bins, boxes, shelves and labels!

Sustain: What works for one person may not work for you, and that’s okay. You know yourself better than anyone so be inspired by your talents and habits. I can guarantee one thing – it will not work if you are not 100% invested in keeping your space organized. That doesn't mean you can’t stay organized if organization isn’t your forte, you can!! It just takes a little training, goal setting and self-discipline. It takes 21 days to form a habit, so stick with it!! Check out this blog post to help with sustaining organization!

Give these 5s steps a try. I hope they work for you to achieve a more order and organization in your space. Please feel free to leave a comment about your experience! I’d love to hear about it!!

I get asked a lot how I manage to stay organized and be productive in business and in my own life. I’ve tested a lot of different methods, checklists, and other people’s suggestions, and while some worked better than others, the important thing was finding what worked best for me and my lifestyle! The past month or so I’ve been trying out the following three things and I'm confident they’re going to stick!!

The 5 Minute Journal.I’ve tried journaling in the past and I’ve stuck with it for a few weeks but then when I missed a day, I felt guilty and that was the thing that kept me from continuing. I also like to journal first thing in the morning, but with just free journaling I often didn’t know what to journal about. The 5 Minute Journal solves both of these issues! It holds true to its name, meaning it is so quick to do, yet still gets me in the mindset of gratitude and productivity. With the format of the journal, I never get stuck of what to write about!

I created my Ideal Schedule. Not to long ago in a blog (4 To-Do List Tips) I mentioned how I make my To-Do List the morning of. This method worked great when my days varied day to day, but I realized it was giving me excuses to push items off indefinitely. So while that method worked for awhile, I noticed a need for change. The past few weeks I’ve been using the Ideal Schedule method laid out by Megan Minns in her YouTube video (which you can find, here!). I combine this ideal schedule with my systems on Asana (great place to keep all my files and systems in one place). By knowing my Ideal Schedule, I’m better able to schedule things like client consultations, collaboration calls, and day to day office work. When I was doing my To-Do list the morning of, I found a lot of things got lost or pushed until the last minute. I have more systems and processes in place now which gives me more structure and the ideal schedule helps to keep them all in order. I can’t tell you how much having an ideal schedule has helped my sanity!!

Use the Pomodoro Technique. This technique is described in the video by Megan Minns, but essentially it consists of doing uninterrupted work for 20 minutes then taking a 5 minute break. This technique breaks down daunting tasks into manageable 20-minute steps and I find I do more quality work in those minutes than if I were to sit down for a full hour. A few apps that coincide with this method and keep track of time are Work FlowTimer and FocusKeeper.

These past blog posts have laid out other habits that I’ve tried, and I’m not saying I don’t still do some of these things, but like my To-Do List habit, some things just don’t fit into my lifestyle anymore! Just like with organization, our needs and preferences change so we always need to reevaluate and adjust accordingly. I believe this is key to sustainability! I encourage you to take a look at your needs and test a few techniques out! Find what works best for you. :)

Happy Tuesday, all! Raise your hand if you want to get organized, but you just don’t know where to start?!? If this is your dilemma, I am here to tell you you’re not alone. Often when things get disorganized, it leads to feeling overwhelmed and you simply don’t know where to begin. Ask yourself the following questions:

I.What room do you or your family spend the most time in?You want the room that you spend the most time in to make you feel relaxed and comfortable, not overwhelmed and stressed by the cabinet that you know is containing the avalanche that would happen if you were to open it.

II.What room do you feel most frustrated/overwhelmed when you walk into it?While organizing every other room is good too, it would be like cutting off one head of the beast. Tackling this room, the one that makes you feel most frustrated, is like killing the beast.

III.What gives you the most joy? Family? A certain hobby? Cooking? What room does this translate to in your home?This goes along with question number one. Let yourself enjoy what brings you happiness with a clean organized space. If you love to cook but you can never find anything in your kitchen it gets to be a stressful situation quickly.

Once you’ve identified the room, use the 5 Steps to Achieving a More Organized Space Blog to start the organizing process. If you’re having trouble knowing what to keep and what to get rid of, take a look at this previous blog post. So, what’s stopping you now? Stop avoiding it – Take Charge. Opt for Organization. Be brave!! And if you don’t want to, call me 😉 Have a wonderful day!!

Hello, organizers! We’ve had a lot of new faces so if you’re new, welcome! At the end of each month I like to do a recap of my month. I think it’s fun to share what’s going on in my life, so you get a chance to get to know the face behind the “Optimal Organization” name!!I'm not sure I can pinpoint an exact time, but recently I've noticed I make a conscious effort to look on the positive side for any situation I'm in. For example, it would be very easy to be upset and angry about the following recent events:​

We may not get our house after all. The seller is going through some things (which I won’t state for his privacy) that could potentially delay our closing date or kill the deal all together. (If you're new to following along, my husband and I are in the process of buying our first home.)

My husband and my flight was delayed last week which caused us to miss our connection and delay our whole trip by a day.

I had banked on being able to work on the flight out of town but the Bluetooth on my device wasn’t working properly and Word was glitchy which meant no work for me (electronic that is – I went old school to pen and paper, but still couldn't get all that I needed to get done, done).

I’ve been experiencing a mental block for creating ideas for work.

Feeling lonely in the world of being a solo-entrepreneur.

I’ve had people (clients and potential collaborators) delay meetings or downright cancel.

Been looked down upon and underestimated all because of my age.

Naturally, these are valid things to get a person angry, at the very least worked up about. While I’ve had my moments, I have chosen to remain optimistic. And people around me have noticed!! What a great feeling for being associated with a positive attitude. So, instead of getting angry, this is how I’m rewriting the story and choosing optimism:

Even though spring just arrived, summer will be here before you know it! The days of late nights on the patio, bon fires & smores, trips to the pool & beach AND an easy situation for a cluttered home because we’re enjoying the nice weather outside. To avoid the headache and stress of coming home to a messy house after a day of fun in the sun, follow these Top 5 Tips for a more organized (stress-free) summer.

Have a bag ready to go at all times. Few suggestions: Towels, sunscreen, sunglasses, deodorant, hair ties, water bottles, waterproof bags (or just ziplocks -- for the wet suits & for all the things like wallet/money, phone, etc.), portable speaker, mini first-aid kit, wet wipes, and a change of dry clothes! For a full checklist, click here.

Get the outdoor furniture and toys cleaned and ready to go now. Blow up any inflatable pools & check for holes and test out any toys that require batteries. Make sure you have back ups on hand! By doing that now, you’re able to get outside right when the nice weather hits & there’s no waiting!

Have a system for when you walk in the door. Make sure everyone in your family knows that right when you walk in the door shoes off, dirty towels/clothes go in a basket waiting by the door (or waiting in the car!), and any other specific things tailored to your family. Especially when coming in from the pool or beach, having all the dirty laundry in one spot right away will cut down time later so you don’t have to be running around the house collecting things. You also eliminate the risk of someone forgetting to put their suit in the wash and it being dirty the next time everyone else is ready to go to the pool/beach.

Make a “Summer To-Do” list. Include your kiddos and make a list of all the things you want to do this summer. It could be as small as chalk on the sidewalk, to a day at the zoo, all the way to a trip to Disneyland! This will give them (and you) something to look forward to, as well as ideas for rainy days. Remember, this is a fun “To-Do” list, so plan but be flexible.

Develop some sort of routine. With kids home from school I feel this is the most important to keeping everyone happy. The “Summer To-Do List” helps with this. When we know what’s expected of us, it’s a lot easier to perform better. So by having clear expectations of what the day will entail (maybe the topic discussed over breakfast?!), hopefully the kiddo meltdowns will be few and far between. You know your family best and how it operates so make a routine that allows you and your family to have the best summer possible. (Again, plan but it’s okay to be flexible sometimes too!)

Hopefully these 5 tips will help you to enjoy your summer just a little bit more!! I’d love to hear your summer plans or how you keep organized with all the summer activities! Comment below :)

Happy Wednesday, Organizers! I think Spring is finally here to stay (yay!) so I wanted to touch base on Spring Cleaning! My first ever Spring Cleaning Organizing Challenge wrapped up at the end of April and I want to thank all those who participated and followed along. I loved coming into your inboxes everyday and interacting with you all on Facebook and Instagram. This challenge was heavily focused on the deep organization of different areas of our home and deciding if there were things that could be donated to help declutter. Today I want to talk about the other side of Spring Cleaning -- the actual cleaning! There are so many checklists and suggestions of Spring Cleaning Tasks so I took the opportunity to compile some of them that I found out there on the internet and added a few that I thought were important (and often forgotten). So get ready, print this off and let’s get to cleaning!!

​By far the biggest challenge of organization is sustaining the hard work that you’ve put into it. Everyone asks me, “It looks great now, but how do I keep it this way?” Well sister, that depends on how much you want it. When we truly want something, we will eat, sleep, breathe the obsession to get it and keep it. Organization is no different. If you truly want an organized, peaceful and decluttered home you must make it a priority. If it’s not, I’m sorry to say, it won’t stay that way! However, I want to let you in on my 3 Tips to Make Organization Sustainable. It is my hope that with these 3 tips, you too can have an organized home (for the long-term!).

Take a picture and hang it in the space. After the space is organized and exactly how you want it, take a picture and tape it right next to it. If it’s a closet, tape it so it’s one of the first things you see. If you organized your Tupperware drawer, tape it into the inside of the drawer where you can see it as you’re putting them away. When you see what it should look like, it triggers something in us to keep it that way. Eventually it will become a habit and you can do away with the picture. This is also helpful in letting the whole family know what it’s supposed to look like. Which leads me to number two…

Include your family. The picture helps them to see what it should look like, but there are also other ways to include them. One suggestion is going one step further with the pictures and have pictures of the contents of the bin/basket/etc. on the outside. For example, say you have a bin of blocks. By having a picture of a block on the outside, it lets them know what goes inside. Working with them may take a little time but showing excitement as they get it right will help them to have a sense of ownership over the space and keep it organized. Another suggestion is making it a game. Tara, a mom in Utah, designates a zone of the home for each of her four kids. Each child gets to pick a song and they dance as they tidy up their zone. It makes it fun for the kids and you aren’t left picking up the whole house on your own! The key to this step is creating a sense of ownership and recognizing the effort to keep it organized. We are much more likely to keep things in tact if we feel proud of “our” space.

Make time to keep it organized and update as necessary. Starting out, I suggest scheduling daily check ins with your newly organized space. After a few weeks it can go to weekly, and after you get the hang of that, monthly. The key here is making time in your schedule, even just 5 minutes, dedicated to making sure this space is maintained. Schedule Organization is just as important as the physical organization of our possessions and the key to sustaining organization.

​Sustaining the newly organized space is always the hardest part, but I’m here to tell you, YOU CAN DO IT! It’s not impossible, in fact, if you want it bad enough it’ll be the easiest thing to implement into your life.

It is 11 pm and I’m sitting here at my kitchen table exhausted, after driving home to Wisconsin after being in Illinois for the past week, yet so on fire with love for what I do. I have been working on Optimal Organization full time for a year now and I am so fired up at seeing the positive impact it has made on people’s lives.

I sat in a room this evening with a group of amazing women dedicated to making the city of Rockford a better place and give back. I was in complete awe of their dedication and generosity and honored to speak at their meeting about organization. It is moments like tonight and jobs like I worked on these past few days that I am so grateful that I get to come home and say, “I love my job”.

I say this, but just know this past week/month has been no walk in the park. We’ve gone through the roller coaster of emotions that is house hunting and organizing deals and contracts have fallen through. At the same time though, my beautiful baby niece, Molly was born. I’ve also gotten to spend time with my family and my husband’s family, and I’ve had some amazing “ah-ha” moments for Optimal Organization (more on that in the coming months!!).

So as I sit here, writing to you (determined to not miss a Tuesday blog), thinking about how to encompass this feeling and it all boils down to GRATITUDE.

It is such a magical thing, gratitude. It has the power to transform our minds if we let it. I was listening to Rachel Hollis’s podcast, Dais, and she pointed out, “You can’t have anger/frustration/anxiety if you are in a space of gratitude”. Like I said my husband and I have been through the emotional roller coaster that is house hunting for about two months now. From the beginning we made a promise to each other that we would try to be optimistic about the whole process, have faith that we would end up where we were meant to be, and try to enjoy the ups and downs because this would be the only time we’d ever be house hunting for our first home together. Well, about 20 houses later and two rejected offers, there’s finally a glimmer of hope that we may have found the one. At first, I didn’t want to talk about this afraid that I’d jinx it, but it’s on my heart and my mind and I think it’s necessary to say – I am still grateful. Even if it falls through, I am grateful. I am grateful that throughout this entire process we have an apartment we love, family that supports us and a patient realtor. I am grateful that we are going through all these trials together and will be stronger because of it. I’m grateful for when we finally get our home that we’ll be able to truly appreciate it. I am grateful to all the people who have beat us to putting in an offer or who’s offer got accepted over ours so that we didn’t end up in a home we weren’t meant to be in. I am grateful for my job that I can go see a home at a moment’s notice because they go off the market so fast. I’m grateful that we can purchase a home at all. I am grateful.

I am also grateful for you, dear reader, for following along on this journey with me. I am grateful for you choosing to spend your time with me here reading this blog. More than you’ll ever know!!

I can go on and on about how much I appreciate you all and all the things we’ve seen or the troubles we’re facing, but at the end of the day, my bad day could be someone’s best day. I am choosing to be grateful and see the positive.

It’s the same thing with organization. Our lives change, our situations change, and things will get messy. However, by being organized we are better equipped to handle these changes and adapt accordingly. When we have gratitude for the things and people in our lives, it doesn’t excuse us from pain and stress, but we’re able to better navigate the things in our lives that may be causing these negative emotions.

I encourage you all to write down three things you are grateful for. Take them with you throughout your day and if they are people, send them a quick message or give them a quick call and tell them how much they mean to you. Open up and allow gratitude to transform your mindset and your life.

Author

Emily has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Iowa State University. There she learned how valuable organization can be in being productive. She chose to use this knowledge and help others achieve this productivity and optimization in their homes and small businesses. Read & Enjoy and as always, let us know if you have any questions!